Moving to VOIP

[luisayuso]

My church just went from DSL to cable, and in doing so we moved our phones to them as well. Bright house markets digital phones, but thats just a digital signal to the modem of the PSTN service.

So here is my idea, and I hope that I am right, if not I could use some mentoring!

I want to upgrade our netgear hardware to a couple of SG300-10 switches, and use the VLAN support with an SPA8800.

the 8800 would create the VOIP network and help me put the phones on the network so I could easily provide IP phones anywhere I can get a network connection. Now, do I need to use Cisco Unified Communications Manager? Not sure what the purpose of that is for.

I just want to take this analog connection and move the phones to the network, and use the automated attendant and voicemail features.

Thanks,

Luis

(new to voip)

[Dan Miley]

Hello Luis,

There are a lot of advantages to using VOIP, more services are coming available, location awareness, email integration, you can use your network bandwith more efficiently, and get a better price on calling minutes.  Viop can add a lot of flexibility to your phone system, but also complexity.

It would be good to get a drawing of what you have now, and where you want to go. 

Firewall type and version, number of workstations, cabling, etc.  That way we can make suggestions for resources.

http://diagram.ly is a good quick drawing site.

Is Brighthouse your voip provider?  or are they providing Analog lines from a device they have on site?

There is a good picture of how the spa3102 fits in the voice and data side of your network in the admin guide page

17

The spa8800 is like 4 of these spa3102s. 

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/csbpvga/ata/administration/guide/ATA_AG_v3_NC-WEB.pdf

Your phone calls would either come and go through the pstn-line port to your analog pstn provider, or...

your calls could go in and out through an external provider, that might give better features, or better price.

The voip provider may be in the 'cloud', or local as if you had a local CUCM, or call management system.

The spa8800 is not a call mangement system, doesn't do voicemail or auto attendant, Those services are in your VOIP call manager (sometimes call PBX, or UC).  or in your cloud provider.

Here's the datasheet for the spa8800

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6790/gatecont/ps10024/ps10446/data_sheet_c78-534718.html

The spa phones and ATAs are supported by many providers, Here's the full document map.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-28766

This site has lots of resources,

http://www.voip-info.org/

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/What+is+VOIP

You can also search for terms (Cisco, SPA8800, long distance, etc)

The cisco small business site has some great resources.

If you are looking at phones, the 500 series has a good range of features.

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/products/voice_conferencing/SPA_500/index.html

all the ATAs

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/products/voice_conferencing/small_business_voice_gateways/index.html

You might want to look at the specs for the spa232d, it is an upgrade to the spa3102, and has wireless handsets that associate with the device.

Depending on your goals, you might think about getting a local cisco partner to help you with your design.

Let us know what you are trying to do and I'm sure we can help.

Dan

[luisayuso]

I drew everything in packet tracer and took snapshots, also including the packet tracer files themselves. I have not gone through and started really setting up routers in the CLI yet, but will get to it when I can.

Packet tracer file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ect6f3i7g8cfnqq/kress%20netowrk%20now.pkt

Brighthouse is gives us a cable modem that acts as both the internet modema nd the PSTN connection for 2 lines.

My initial idea of how a voice gateway could be incorporated is between the cable modem and the main router. 2 connection leave the modem, one for analog pstn. The ethernet cable goes straight to the router, and the rj-11 goes to the voice gateway, and from there to the same router.

The network after:

packet tracer file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c37o2vhh7udc5km/Kress%20Church%20Network%20After.pkt

From what I see in the links you provided, there is not really a mention of this kind of setup. Would this setup be possible using a cisco voice gateway then? I was hoping to use the SG300 series switches for their VLAN capabilities to help manage the phone traffic.

[Dan Miley]

Good work on the packet tracer files.

A couple items:

The spa8800 and spa232d are

I've  not seen success storys with using back to back voip gateways.  It can  be made to work, but frequently is not satisfactory.  Of course the only  people who call me are when it's not working.

Here's what you are showing in the diagram

Brighthouse voip infrastructure -- Brighthouse MTA/ATA -- Cisco SPA232d/spa8800/spa3102Voip Gateway --Voip locally -- ?call manager? -- voip phones

simpler would be to get a sip account with Brighthouse and use one device with a sip connection or trunk.

Brighthouse voip infrastructure -- Sip account-- call manager -- voip phones

Brighthouse voip infrastructure

|

Sip account

|

SPA8800 -- pstn line in -- brighthouse MTA

|

analog phones and voip phones

Vlans are generally used to  seperate areas of the network.  You would seperate networks, or services  to allow higher priority (Voice, or video), or for security or business  reasons.

In this case, do you want the media and tech folks to have access to the pastor and accounting computers? 

office, normal priority, secure

voice - higher priority, secure

sanctuary, Video priority - ??

guest, low priority - public

You would have to  see if this makes sense, if your wrt300N will not do guest vlans, the  wireless may need to be the same as the office vlan. etc....

how many phone sets, estensions, receptionist, etc do you have?  

I don't see a call manager in there, the voip  gateways/ATAs are not call managers,

they don't have auto attendant,  voicemail, call routing, etc.

You show some 7960voip phones and 1841 router, those are currently in place?

If not, you might look at the spa500 series phones,

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10499/index.html

Datasheets at the bottom.

This is a good place to get folks to review your plans,

just don't put any passwords, or identifiable info on this public forum.

[luisayuso]

First, the packet tracer isn't meant to be a 1:1 replica of the network in respect to models of switches and routers.

I cannot find a way to add current models into packet tracer. Second, there is only one gateway/ATA to convert the PSTN signal to Voip. I guess I would have to find a call manager to use in house that would actually route the calls to the appropriate location.

So before I allow this to go any further, because I have obviously been reading everything wrong, What is necessary for a small deployment of VOIP?

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is ALL that I want to do (because our phone and internet services are under contract and we have no wiggle room to add to the monthly bills).

bright house delivers a cable internet connection, and a PSTN line via their modem.

(It is called digital phone because they deliver it over their network, but it is still a PSTN connection from the modem)

I want to convert the PSTN signal that we recieve, to a Voip signal that I can manage with extensions (offices).

From what I can see, I would need either a Gateway/ATA to convert the signal, and a call manager to route the calls to the correct devices. Hopefully I am getting this correctly. So when you talk about a call manager, do you mean Cisco Unified Communications Manager? or are there third-party options also available that would work? like opene source solutions?

Beyond the gateway/ata, call manager, and voip phones, what other hardware should I be considering?